Monday, August 27, 2012

It all started out with this simple idea back there in the winter of doing a video with the camcorder set on the low light mode which would make the car lights glow across the screen like energy trails and mix that up with video of art work and up there on the elevated sidewalk moving towards the intersection of Main Street and Cumberland Avenue when here comes the train blasting a solo way past Charlie Parker directly into the soul of the hobo and me waiting with the camera and mix it up I say mix it up and the video got all shaky there in the cold frost of evening and I looked at it on the little view monitor and figured I would have to edit that stuff out but when the mix started it was right on target and the best stuff for the “Energy Cantata” video along with these shots of the art work like floating over a strange world and looking down on it like Neil Armstrong I say looking down at this strange world like Neil Armstrong flying out there in the place where we all go when it is over but no even better than that mix it up and mix it up with the scenes of the headlights glowing across the street and the ambulance sitting there in the parking lot for no reason and flash flash across the landscape like when the Lakota had calmed down for a minute after being herded up like wild animals into the compound and someone came up with this bright idea to give some of the warriors who had been on the battle field at Little Big Horn to draw the details of their movements and maybe the military could figure out the strategy and here comes these images of men leaning sideways with the view of the battlefield from overhead like a bird’s eye view of the scene with the men lying down sideways and it seemed so child-like to these wise men of the military who couldn’t see the vision of the holographic image from overhead while the battle was going on and they couldn’t understand the concept of vision like Neil Armstrong flying over some strange landscape out there out there mix it up and so here it is these works of art going around and for an instant it felt like the skin of a drum bouncing around like the surface of this land with strange energy lines out there and the sound of energy over and over energy mix it up and someone said something about this was a good start to three videos about all of this and I was completely happy to move on and forget this celebration of energy and the vision like those drawings which make sense to anyone with vision but to someone who is into the totally material concrete reality of yellow metal gold Black Hills mix it up mix it up and dream across the land like Charlie Parker birdland mix it up like birdland and the Indians see the world from vision and freedom and here in the middle of this drawing is a mark which means the sound of the cannons blasting shells that rip the skin and flesh and bodies of the warriors who sing for freedom and the right to live in peace but there is no peace there is no peace on war for the right to take this material world by force and forget about peace and freedom while the vision keeps on happening and so there is no way to stop the screams these marks over here over here mix it up and then on May 23, 2012 it could go on like this any longer and it was time to make that spring pilgrimage up the mountain up the mountain mix it up and go up that stream to the cave like birdland in a dream and walking up through there off the trail and up the stream past the iron furnace of the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park where the fort at the top of the mountain changed hands between the North and South three times without any shots being fired but before that it was a trail between here and there and here is this cave so we walked up the stream, Maggie and I and I shot video with a camcorder and a digital video recorder while she took photographs and then the idea was born to do the next installment of the three videos on energy as the “Energy Streams” and I put together five works of art and video taped them and video taped them over and over until I got the time motion slow down slow down you’re moving too fast but some of it looked good going really fast like the video looked like the lines would come up into space and there in the middle of it was another fractal and another and mix it up mix it up with nature this natural scene of water flowing down the mountain and this Neil Armstrong science fiction mad Indian energy stream of art work over there over there and fractal video like mathematics could map the flow of energy across the landscape but digital or not the stream keeps running down the mountain and the waves of energy flow stream roll tumble across the flat skin surreal world of planet splash jump jump mix it up mix it up art work and then the sounds of music with the base track of the stream which isn’t nice and soothing like the video of Turkey Creek in the video “Listen to these Waters” which makes you want to sink into this place of deep calm but no this is the sound of water in a hurry full of energy and over that are other sounds mixed in all together mix it up mix it up and it isn’t that bad like a fingernail on the chalk board but still yet you don’t think about sinking into it and it all goes together with the harmonica sounds and various poems being read and a little sample of some electronica or is that pow-wow music and here is some ancient traditional Peruvian music or a lift rip-off of some ultra-modern classical music played backwards with heavy echo mix it up mix it up and suddenly it’s been fifteen minutes and somewhere in the web of functional reality there are great big spaces where energy can flow through but all that material madness of yellow metal gold greed and suffering that traps us all here in the time-space continuum web like that but those with vision those with vision those who get really small and slide through the gaps in the time-space web of reality don’t mind if the energy streams move out there past time and this isn’t a Lakota trying to explain the method of engagement on the battlefield in three dimensional holographic pencil marks but just a brief footnote of how the energy flows through the time-space continuum between many worlds like Charlie Parker blowing Star Dust dreaming mix it up mix it up energy streams splash splash

Artwork in the “Energy Streams” video can be viewed on the "Watercolor" page of the Loveday Studio web site.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Fragments gel in the cool blue amber dream of mixing this and that to become the other and some other brother as it all melts inside the electro-syntax pulse of knowing as we become real in the function of experience absorbing the stimuli of awareness so that two fragments become a whole in the outcome of this and that point in art history back there when artists stopped being held hostage to concrete reality and started making art that was just as real as the other art they were making had been making all along and continue to make but that art looked like a mirror of the world around us but it was the flawed mirror of time constraint like I can’t go out and paint a landscape at three in the afternoon and get the clouds to stay in one place all the time I am painting so in the end the painting that I complete at the end of the day is not the landscape that I was looking at the whole time because nothing is permanent and reality keeps shifting in form and function but the camera comes along with its silver emulsion of light sensitive composition of chemistry and reality is frozen in a flash of light just like that denuded of its sounds or scents but those who need continual reassurance that there is no boogie man under the bed or in the closet can look at a photograph of a landscape and the clouds are frozen in place forever in that unnatural manner that people need in order to feel like they are on firm footing with reality as the world continues to shift and crumble like sand castles on the beach as the tide rushes in to make new all that is in that continual transformation and our memory remains of a day on the beach making a sand castle that will not last but for a few hours and that is who we are in the end and all that remains is the sand washed clean of our infringement upon the natural world and the memory of a good time and we walk down the sidewalk hearing the sounds of the sidewalk reality all merging into our mind and becoming the experience of the moment and that is the sidewalk music we dance to as the artist steps forward with brush in hand and puts the brush into a vial of ink and the ink climbs up the fibers of the brush and resides there in the manner of ink surface tension music water atom dreaming until the flick of the wrist dislodges the ink splattering it across the gulf of emptiness between here and the edge of infinity and just as it is all about to become nothing and forever is just a whisper of smoke in the illusion of memory suddenly the ink explodes in a violent force of impact onto the paper and leaves a mark just as accurate if not more so than the splash of light exploding into the greedy molecules of film to make a photograph and reality is just as real now as it was the last time or the first time or the next time and the sax man knows as he blows his songs against the skin of the Universe and pauses a minute to hear the reverberation of echoes against the walls of ear canal sound chambers like the immutable sound track of knowing emptiness as the fan blows against the waves of energy and I have placed the video digital recorder on the desk in front of the computer where the audio track from “Blues in the key of G” are vibrating the surface of the desk and I let the backdrop tease and taunt me through another practice session on the harmonica and the two elements of sound mix in the mind and become something new and different from what I was doing and it really is what you want it to be and at some point you want it to be the wash of high tide rolling in across a nude beach devoid of all infringement of tourist with impending doom of self-destructive illusions and the waves wash the fabric of light clean from the nothingness again and again and again

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Space migration of ink across filament of brush fiber bead of moisture dripping and flowing onto surface like mote floating across eye tear drop dream as the waves of energy send magnetic ripples of instant recognition into the collision of liquid and surface as the dream descends and transcends into the jelly particle memory pool of floating like a landscape stapled to a board in the studio of a converted chicken coop reminding me of the translucent nature of all evaporating mirages undulating in the heat wave dance of summer and twenty years later after the wasp had consumed the paper from the wall for nests the index cards of mail art transposed into future enigmas as the slip stream of thought remembers Sesshu Toyo from another dream of walking through the Cleveland Museum of Art and seeing the scroll hanging behind glass and sitting before it in reverence and how the moment explodes again and again (repeat forever) again

Thursday, May 31, 2012

The voice of the tundra in the socio-economic maelstrom repeats itself in bio/re-generational continuums in sequential cycles of repetitive memory as reduced through planetary absolution of rendered carbon diodes suppressed by multi-visual angst such is vanity in the pathos of removable enumeration of focused patterns of completion whereas the discord disintegrates into dynamic dissonance of fading echoes as we stand at the portals of intense departures in the manner that ice begets ice and where the melting overlaps the sweating we discharge co-genital mesmerizing liquidation fluidity such is the status of plasticity merging with layered frequencies that denote static alignment in the receptor section of parallel stellar encoding as the planets shift and the rhythm of hiss induces extra-sensory elongation between the moment of arrival and the awareness of purpose left at the edge of fruition after leaving the train station and experiencing extreme dislocation but that wasn’t the point of motion after all while we stand at the portals and scream of not getting the picture/this is no picture/ and walking up past Broadway and cutting over to Vine where the Candy Man jams to the sonic blast of universal energy incoming constantly near the flux of continental plates that rub up against each other like wolves in a pack hunting elk across the sub-tundra as the gain degrades and the music fades and we’re left with substandard recordings of Jim Morrison recounting the vintage waves of heat patterns across the Great Divide layered with acid in the midnight sun where ice slowly regains dominance over sweat and it starts all over again in a fast forward reeling of tundra memory re-membered.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

In the
Old Ways in order to have an identity a young person has to have a dream (vision) that shows them who they are. This dream comes from the Ancient Ones, those relatives of the spirit world who have taken on the role of sticking around and serving as a bridge between those of us in the material world and the Great Mystery that dwells in the Great Beyond. There are different ways to connect with the Ancient Ones in order to get the dream, and when you get your dream, we don’t tell you, you have to tell us. No one comes between a person and their relatives of the spirit world. The only concern would be if a person attempted to make up a good story and relate it as though it was given to them by the Ancient Ones and then it would be taken into question, as this happens sometimes.

There are many ways we visualize our relationship with the Ancient Ones, and most of these images are nature-based as they relate to the world around us in a spiritual manner. In the spiritual journey throughout life the first dream-vision is the foundation for all other dreams that follow and build upon the first vision. For some, the journey through this life is going to be fairly basic and they get a good vision to start with that guides them for many years. Others might have new challenges that come along in the journey that requires a bit of an upgrade. Each person has an individual relationship with the Ancient Ones with respect to whom they are, but as a general rule, one needs to step out into isolation from the normal social life for a short time in order to pay attention fully to the awareness so there are no distractions or interruptions while accessing the connection with the Ancient Ones. This is referred to in the
Old Ways as a Vision Quest, and it is generally the most important ritual that a person might do in life. Each tribal people have their own customs and I can’t cover every tribal custom from all over the world and I mean no disrespect towards any people or culture when speaking in a brief manner about what little I know on the topic.

As the Mother is in transition and a lot of things have happened here on TurtleIsland (The Americas) over the past few hundred years, I’ve heard it said that a lot of wisdom is being lost due to the cultural and racial genocide against tribal peoples. The same could be said of many other tribal nations around the world. As I considered this for some time many years ago, it became apparent to me that the wisdom might have come from some other source other than of human design, and if so, that wisdom is still accessible to us, so nothing is lost as we go through this period of stress when some things are lost for a while. The important thing is to remember how to access this information. That is the big deal. We don’t have to keep information in our pool of wisdom if it isn’t needed right now, but we do need to know how to renew the pool on an “as needed basis”. That understanding that remembering how to access the bridge is very important became part of my vision and role. It is still out there, all of it. We just have to come forward with respect and honor those that serve as a bridge between this world and the world beyond that has the knowledge and wisdom we need in order to survive. There is too much wisdom in the mystery for humans to integrate into our reality, so we just have to request enough to get by for a while.

At some point a person might get ripe enough in spirit to attempt the journey into the mystery. Some stories tell of a man or woman crossing into the spirit world in a dream or vision via the rainbow. This journey into the Rainbow Nation is one of the most difficult challenges a person can attempt, as it requires that the person leave behind their identity as defined by that first vision. They become dependant upon the ancient identity for distinction of self which is invisible to them but visible to others who have the gift of spiritual sight. A person has a sense of being a drop of water in the morning mist and all sense of self dissolves into the fog of nothingness. They make the journey into the spirit world across the RainbowBridge where there is no distinction of self, only a sense of everything and nothing at the same time. There is no time or space. Just everything and nothing all at the same time and never at all. It is important that we work towards becoming prepared to walk across the RainbowBridge because those that do so will eventually be given the opportunity to take on the role of one of the Ancient Ones sometime in the distant now of future time markings. Everything changes and cycles through and those serving in the role get to do other things after a while, so it is up to us to do the work and get ready to relieve them when the time comes.

I love the stories of how a young woman with a pure heart was able to walk across the RainbowBridge and walk with the Thunder Beings or how a young warrior chased the bear up into the Star Nation and continues to chase the bear across the sky each night. These are stories about those who made the journey into the world of the Nation of Ancient Ones. They are around us all the time, giving us the knowledge and wisdom we need as Red Path Nation People (People who walk the path of the heart in this physical world). That is their name for us. They don’t have physical bodies like we do and so we have to do some things for them with our hands and breath so they feel complete somehow. That is why the grandfathers and grandmothers will sit and smoke alone some days. The Ancient Ones need to do their ceremonies but they can’t make smoke and offer it up, so we do that for them so they can make good prayers and ask for blessings in their ways. It’s good to have a balanced relationship with the Ancient Ones in this manner. They give us what we need from the other world and we help them walk in balance in their bridge world. That is why it is good to offer tobacco to the Elders who honor this relationship in a good way. The tobacco is used to offer up smoke so the Ancient Ones can say their prayers too. In this way, there is much beauty in this world and we are all given a good blessing. Like dew on the squash blossom, we all are given water (spiritual nourishment) for our thirst. A-ho!

Thursday, May 3, 2012

The Vader Gators don’t want folks to know this. The spiritual axiom is that it takes a healthy ego in order to experience ego death. In the random curve of eventuality all spiritual journeys lead to the healthy ego. Some just take the long way around. Some people get addicted to pain and really do have to take the longest possible path to that destiny. Any and all spiritual journeys bring the person to that point wherein they arrive at the state of a healthy ego. At that point it is up to them to make the leap of faith into ego death. All the rest of us can do is show the way for those that come behind us.

The discipline of unification towards a healthy ego is short-tracked through several approaches which involve engaging with a mentor. As related in the past, the spiritual warrior chooses a discipline and uses that discipline to control fear rather than letting the fear control the warrior. The warrior tradition evolves from a universal non-gendered function of self integrated into the whole (Holy) experience of total consciousness as an observer of both internal and external stimuli that allows the person to become aware of all forces at play from within the observable reality. Everything else is mystery. The encodement of disciplinary observation is imparted through the teachings provided by one’s mentor which is going to transfer an understanding that one’s self has the indelible mark of identity that no power in the Universe can alter. It is through the awareness of cause and effect that one arrives at the knowledge that they “reap what they sow” and no force in the Universe can alter or block that process. Once that fear has been addressed and resolved, then each person will step forward in their journey towards arriving at a healthy ego.

In the teachings of the spiritual warrior it is presented as a challenge of preparing for ego-death that the warrior becomes competent in the discipline of creativity. It is through the function of creativity that the warrior steps outside the pre-defined ego status and encounters the mystery and derives some manner of expression from that effort that can be communicated to others. The general manner by which one does this in tribal culture is via ritual. The healthy ego will manifest through the process of practicing all expressions of creativity. All spiritual disciplines integrate the creative process into the work.

As it has been expressed in this passage that “all spiritual disciplines lead to a healthy ego”, and that this is true in the knowledge that each individual will be given many opportunities to work through the dysfunction of an unhealthy ego until they are ready to unify all the efforts into an integrated-self as a healthy ego and arrive at the point where the leap of faith into ego-death will happen. That being said, there is no need to make the distinction between “good medicine” and “bad medicine” or “white magic” and “black magic” because it has been stated implicitly that the Universal Law of Causality means that each person gets back what they put out, so whatever effort is made becomes a method of feedback that informs the person about the merits of their effort towards arriving at a healthy ego. Therefore, all paths eventually lead to a healthy ego. It is just a question of how much pain a person has to put themselves through before having enough and merging onto the path of total unification of self wherein all selfish desires and expectations will be addressed through the discipline of the chosen path. The unhealthy ego harbors aspects of selfish intent while the healthy ego arrives at a point of acceptance that perfection is an expression of unification through total awareness.

The Vader Gators are good teachers if the information one is seeking is a good reason to turn around and go in the other direction in their spiritual journey. Knowing that all paths lead to the same destiny frees all pilgrims from pride, a major spiritual barrier, and gives us the ability to support each other in our journey, even if that person is heading full steam ahead towards the Vader Gators. After enough pain and suffering has been gleaned, they’ll do the same thing we did back there somewhere. Know what I mean, Vern?

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

The problem with the Euro-centric (aka Western Culture; aka white man’s world) concept of ego is how constrictive it becomes. It is impossible to remain within the parameters of the construct of “ego” as identified by Western Culture and function as a healthy individual. While the word is derivative of Ancient Greek culture, it has gone through a transformative redefinition process in order to reflect the cultural ideals of the time and place that has rendered it an ineffective term with respect to the human psyche.

The dilemma is borne out of the empirical need to generate a system of “otherness” that allows the King of the Empire to be considered a person chosen by the unseen spiritual guidance (reductively referred to as “God” in the Euro-centric construct of the hour) to hold dominion over all subjects under him. The King is perfect and the subjects are imperfect, and that is how it will be forever and ever. As such, the ego, that definition of “self” within the subordinate subject in the Kingdom, is an imperfect ego. This model of “self”, that has been distorted from the original concept in order to impose dominance over society, implies that all those under the King suffer from some imperfection and can never achieve the state of perfection because God will only choose one and that one is the current King. (Most Kings came into power through physical prowess or under-handed treachery, but details are always irrelevant in matters such as subjecting subjects to subjection.)

A few centuries after the Order of the Sacred King had been well established throughout Europe, along comes a group of people with the bigger, bolder plan that redefined the ego into an even greater dysfunction of humanity. The deification of Jesus of Nazareth is well documented in historical sources not readily available to the general public (subjected subjects don’t need to know the facts) wherein a similar model of a God-appointed human being becomes the King over all, As that person is no longer resident in the physical realm, it is up to others to define the role and manner with which the subjects are to follow as members of that “Kingdom of God”. Unlike the small tribal groups that functioned in Europe for a few eons before all of this happened, where the King became King because he was a leader of warriors (which meant he was out in the front line of battle when such an event occurred) those in charge of ruling over society were well entrenched in secure quarters. Should a battle break out, they gave orders from the safety of their secure quarters and men on the battle field, less worthy of the blessing of safety during battle, had to carry out those orders. This became the model for the “sacred order of society” as well as the secular (or profane).

Thus a society evolved out of the notion that regular humans are imperfect and incapable of achieving the status of perfection that only God could award to one person and one person only. This negative feedback from a dominate force rendered those of that society into servitude to that dominate force which was also made up of mere mortals. It’s a great power grabbing scheme. Unfortunately, it also suggests, as a dogmatic religion, that human beings can achieve perfection in the spirit world after their demise by way of giving up their will and lives to the control and power of the dominate human persona. The philosophy of the imperfect ego suggests that the person is not good enough, will never be good enough, and the best that person can hope for is to sacrifice their life and compromise their integrity as a human being in order to, perhaps, no way to tell for sure, achieve perfection in the next world. This gives the warrior great motivation to fight to the death on the battle field. The leader isn’t there to die first, as things once were in the manner of tribal culture, so the spoils of victory come with very little pain on the part of the supposedly God-appointed leader.

The human ego as a function of the warrior in battle, is the will to survive. Diminishing that construct in any way diminishes the warrior’s will to survive and becomes a model of fatalistic defeatism as a function of “self”, no matter what the outcome for society or the enrichment of the (non-warrior) leaders. When the construct of the fatalistic imperfect self is imposed upon society at large, there is a constant anxiety of not being good enough, which leads to fear-based behavior that explodes into materialistic efforts to possess enough stuff so that the person takes on the appearances of Godly features. The person is never going to be good enough within this construct, so the focus is futile, while the true human nature issue of being a person whose first goal is to survive and thus after that is to develop spiritually in order to further the ability to survive and pass on the teachings of survival to the offspring is thwarted. The ego that is always going to be imperfect, no matter what, becomes the ego that is fear-based. That gives those who dominate others the power to reap the rewards those under them achieve while the subordinates live and die in order to do this. This yields into societies that praise suicide bombers and support drug addiction to the point of fatal behavior because the feedback from that society is that attempting to do anything else is futile, so why bother.

A philosophy that garners a positive approach to the survival of a person in the role of a warrior, who is willing to sacrifice their life in order to protect the lives of others within their society, would avoid defining “self” or “ego” as an imperfect function of a human being. A better option would be to define the person, in whatever manner or terms, as constantly mutating into a new persona with the ultimate goal of achieving the status of humanly achievable perfection. The first order of business is the survival of the person, after which options can be defined wherein they go through various roles as warrior, parent, spouse, teacher, or grandparent no longer viable enough to provide knowledge or resources to their social group, so the ego arrives at a point of accepting the need to take a walk in the blizzard so that others may have the limited amount of food available. That model of an ego is life-affirming function of a person. It genders the idea that a person can seek to enrich their life and the lives of others through spiritual discipline with the time not spent addressing survival issues, whether this is the protection of the whole social group of people within that society, or the work of parenting as a mother, in what has always been and always will be a life-threatening experience of which humans have to endure in order for the species to survive.A model of “life-affirmation ego” expands beyond “self” to include others as a function of a healthy ego. The model of the imperfect ego subjected to the will and power of a dominate force is the model of an unhealthy ego that has other agendas at stake other than the survival of the person being subjected to the dominate control of other human beings. As such, the current term of “ego” implies that my human spirit is in imprisoned in a reality imposed upon me from outside forces who seek to have me align myself with that philosophy so as to enrich those in control. I systematically reject the definition of ego as defined by those with ulterior motives and embrace the function of ego that is life-affirming and spiritually dynamic in a manner that makes me feel good about whom I am as a healthy, well-balanced person.

Not only do human beings make terrible deities, but they also make terrible spokespersons for deified human beings. So long as I remain human in function and accept that others function as human beings my life remains a lot healthier. I reject the “ego cage” the white man continually attempts to impose upon my human spirit and embrace the model of “one step beyond….” A-ho!

Friday, April 27, 2012

There’s an adjustment to be made here in this process of reintegration into domestication after going through the gauntlet of post-materialistic realization. I am awake. I have awakened. I feel the gnawing of hunger and remember that there is peanut butter and crackers in the kitchen. At 4:30 am I rise up from a night of restless sleep and get these and the cup of cold coffee left over from the previous day. As I sit and eat and sip I reflect back on my reality two years ago. I was sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag. I had no money. I would walk an hour from where I was staying to the community kitchen for food on the days they would serve free food. On those days they didn’t serve, I would try to have something to eat, but sometimes that didn’t happen. I was staying with a friend who considered it irresponsible if I wasn’t employed and earning a living, so he refused to help out with food. He had a jar of peanut butter and crackers by his recliner. He would sit and eat these for a snack while watching television. At night I would get up when the pain of hungry got to be too much and go eat some of his peanut butter and crackers. I would try to do it so he couldn’t tell that I had taken any.

There are indications that it takes time to overcome obstacles and recover from hardships. Living in survival mode took me past my usual sense of self. I can endure. I will endure. I have endured. I have been enduring to the point where endurance is a function of everyday life. I don’t have to lay there and be hungry at night any longer. I have been disciplined to endure so I forget. It is a reality I never forget. Lying there at night knowing that if I try to sneak in and get something to eat my father will hear me, and we all know what happens next; that memory. I endure.

The need to survive emanates from chosen stature. Others would attempt to impose cellular re-modification in an effort to disrupt the ability to endure. The knowledge that survival is ego-based and a healthy ego survives best ensures that I keep focused on the goal beyond post-materialistic dis-unification. Reunification integrates that achievement. The reintegration process utilizes all aspects of self and self is defined by cosmological vision, not constrictive societal constructs. Society would have it otherwise. The paradigm of behavior modification is that if enough pain is imposed upon a person they will yield to societal demands. Endurance and the will to survive with the understanding that reunification and reintegration are self-regenerative processes that supercede non-irreparable damage makes it possible to persevere. Beyond irreparable damage is the knowledge that regeneration will occur anyway, transcending time and space through incarnate behavior.

Nothing is lost. Nothing is gained. It is all the same. “I don’t miss the crumbs/I do miss the crackers” was recited as verse in the appeal to White Feather. Now some crackers are missing. Now some crumbs are revealing. After the deluge the idea remains intact. We are Holy as One/and more/and more/and more.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

For several years there had been these dreams. I didn’t know what to make of them, really. I had tried to seek understanding by going to a teacher, a wise man, a medicine man, but that wasn’t my path. My journey kept taking me back home to the mountains and hills, rivers, streams, rocks and springs where water flowed up from the rocks. I walked amongst my people like a stranger in a strange land. They were as alien to me as I was to them.

And these dreams. They would show me how to do these activities that would alleviate physical problems others endured. I would wake up and wonder why I was being shown these things. I wasn’t a medicine man. I am an artist, poet, singer, dreamer, and lover who loves the
Old Ways and wants to feel a part of the tribal mind that once was here. Finally in November, 1991, my oldest sister died of cancer. I had dreams about how to help her if she ever asked. She never did. I felt anger because she would rather die than ask for help through the
Old Ways. To her it was evil. I didn’t know what to do with my anger. I vowed to Sun Dance for four years and pray. I went to a friend and asked for help to do this, as it is a Plains Indian ceremony and I am Cherokee. He agreed to help. I felt the need to go on the hill and pray for a vision as well. I wanted to ask spirit if I was supposed to use these dreams, this information, even though I did not consider myself a medicine man. I went on the hill during dogwood winter for three days and nights. I stood there in the wind on the top of a mountain with nothing but a pair of shorts on and a quilt my grandmother had made when she was still a young woman. I would raise up the Sacred Pipe and asked the Creator to take pity on me. “I am a child down here in this world. I don’t know what I am doing. Please forgive me and let me live in spite of my mistakes today. I mean no disrespect. I only wanted to ask for understanding about this one thing, these dreams.” I prayed hard. It was hard. It was cold. Several mornings there was frost. The wind blew all the time. In the middle of it a thunderstorm came all day and all night. I would watch from the mountain as the clouds come over the horizon, and then they would split and go to the north and south of me moving east. All night that night they would flash from the north and south. I got a little shower a few times. I prayed hard.

There is a little I can say about what I experienced up there 20 years ago. I’ve said just a little already along the way. It is who I am, so I really don’t need to talk about it that much, just do it. It became obvious real quick that I was supposed to be using the information that was coming through in dreams to help others, including my family. There was more information while I was up there, although I wasn’t praying for it. I got it anyway. Then one day of it up there things shifted into a strange sort of theme. It was like a dream of the future. I saw waves and layers and patterns of information about communicating with others across a web. I didn’t know much about the internet yet. It was still being invented. Over time I came to understand what all of this was about. I thought spirit would reveal things in vision like birds and animals in nature. It appears like spirit knows all about technology and will challenge a person to utilize all aspects of reality to help make this a better world to live in. I survived. That was the real answer to all my prayers. I was glad to be off that mountain and back amongst family and friends.

That summer I danced for four days at Sun Dance. I prayed for the spirit of healing that comes forward through various humans to help the People. I could tell that what I was doing was a little off the mark, but I prayed anyway. I knew the effort would result in my becoming aligned with what was most important in all of this. I kept asked that the Creator take pity on my and look the other way when I messed up. I am a child in this world. I know nothing. The next year was different. A new family member was in my life, my daughter, Margaret Olivia (Maggie) Loveday, born June 14, 1992. Other family matters disrupted my plans and I was only able to dance for one day that year. Family comes first. That is how it is in the
Old Ways. It was okay. The next year I had to go to a different circle and friends and ask for help to honor my commitment. It was hard. Afterwards a friend told me that it was hard because I had to make up for missing three days the previous year. I also understood that praying for the healing energy and for my sister who had passed away was not helping anything. The most important thing I could do was pray for family. Always, no matter what, pray for family. From then on I prayed for family. I can’t make someone ask for help. I can only pray for them in that sacred manner related in the dreams if they ask for help. Otherwise, I need to leave them alone and let them walk their own journey and accept that it is their journey. But I can always pray for family, no matter what. It is a duty. It is what is in my heart. Honor the heart. Honor the Red Path, which is the path of the heart. The last year of my four year commitment my wife and daughter were beside me during part of the ceremony. My daughter fell asleep and had a child’s dream in the circle with me. That is who she is. That is her journey. I prayed.

Twenty years later it still hurts. The woman who had stood beside me many times from the “Stick Holding” ceremony, my sister’s funeral, ceremonies and other life events chose to walk a different path. Others who had asked for help and agreed to give back over time as part of their expression of gratitude gave back the least they could if at all, and most kept taking more than they gave from that point on until their journey took them in other directions as well. I worked hard to accept this and not become cynical or let it harden my heart. I still pray for acceptance every day. Some did great harm on their way out to other paths. In the fall of 2003 I entered into the 7th Challenge of the Seven Challenges a medicine man faces, as related to me by Rolling Thunder in the spring of 1991. For almost seven years the process went on where I lost everything. My marriage failed. I was unable to generate funds from my work. I lost the property I had taken ownership of in the manner of “white man’s law” after a breach of contract. I spent 15 months staying with my father and watching his health decline. Through it all I kept the altar I had been using to help other with through ceremony and I prayed for my family, especially Maggie. In January, 2010, I had an experience and knew that I had completed the 7th Challenge. I was homeless and sleeping on the floor of a back bedroom in a friend’s house trailer. I had no way to earn money and he wasn’t feeding me. I had to walk several miles to a community soup kitchen for free food twice a day except Sunday. On Sunday I could fast or come up with other ways to eat.

For the past nine years there have been many dreams but there are very few about information on how to help others with physical problems. I have enough information on that topic already. I could forget most of it and still have more information than I could ever use. Today the dreams are about the young people that will be coming to seek help in understanding their dreams. Unlike me, there will be someone they can go to. I had no one. That person I was seeking back in 1976 after my first vision to help me understand it and make sense of it and possibly use it in my life now looks back at me in the mirror. I am the person I was always seeking.

Today I don’t have the energy I had twenty years ago. Nor does anyone else my age. So what. In the
Old Ways it is said that if someone asks for help and I have a reason to say “no”, then I can say “no”. If I don’t have a reason to say “No”, then I have to answer “Yes”. I have more reasons to say “No” today. Few ask. Last summer a friend whom had asked for help in the past came from Spain and offered tobacco and asked that we do a Pipe Ceremony. It was good to do this. In the dreams she will come back again some day. In the dreams I will be back home before this happens. I remain in exile today. On July 20, 2011 a woman offered me tobacco and asked for help. That request was responded to in the affirmative and she is under protection of those spirits that came forth in response to her request for a full year. She has faced great adversity already and she will face more adversity between now and July 20 of this year. Those who would seek to intervene and keep her from honoring her path will fail.

I watch many people suffer but I’ve learned my lesson, as much as it hurts. I can’t help them unless they ask for help and all signs indicate a positive situation. It is more important now that I prepare to pass on this information to the young people and get them started in how to use the
Old Ways to help others. I have enough energy to do that. I have very little time or interest in relating this information to older people. The effort has already indicated that it is a process of diminishing returns. Most of my own generation feels that it is acceptable to take and not give back and there is nothing I can do for them. There are a few exceptions and they are a joy to have around. Of the rest, the sooner they are dead and gone the easier my life will be. That is a sad thought but they have chosen to make that their reality. It hurts. I tried to wish it into being some other way but that is adverse to the universe and the law of free will. So be it.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

This was in a dream some 20 years ago or more after working on a painting late into the night and in the dream I was standing in a museum and a group of children on a class trip to the museum walked up to a painting of mine and became very quiet as they all looked at it and even the tour guide stopped talking and just looked and finally one of the students looked up at the teacher and said “I can hear the music in this painting…” and that is when I started hearing the music also and remembered the dream when I woke up and got up and went into the room where the painting I had finished the night before lay on the table and still waking up from the dream I sensed the music and knew that it is humanly possible to hear music from visual elements inside there and the dream stuck with me and the painting they were looking at in the dream remained in my head so that I had to paint it also and I can remember the dream and in the recall I can hear the music of each work of art that I do as I work so that it is like creating a song and in the Old Ways of the Native American tribal cultures it is said that when a potter makes a pot from clay that there is a song that goes into the pot and you can feel the song come through your skin when you touch it or maybe even hear it when you hold the opening of it to your ear like hearing the ocean inside a sea shell but when the pot is broken the song is released back into the universe but not all of the song goes away because I’ve found broken pieces of pottery near an old village and held it in my hand and a little bit of the song was still in there singing through my skin so I could hear the song and have a bit of insight into the place and time of the clay as it became pottery and pigment that goes into painting comes from clay as all the colors come from the earth even it they are created in a paint factory like some of the man-made pigments but it was earth transformed into pigment so it makes sense in that strange manner of tribal mind that making a painting is like making a piece of pottery only with a thin skin of clay on canvas or pottery so I take this idea and seek ways to transform the experience into sound as well so that the sounds I’m “hearing” inside my head can become audible sounds in the air as guides to others so they can learn to hear the sounds that come from colors or clay or earth and expand that sense of knowing the songs that rise up from the earth that are the vibrations of creativity that transform us as we grow spiritually in the dance of dreaming a new life into each moment

Monday, March 5, 2012

It’s not polite to be radical and speak so openly about unseen energy abounding amongst our midst and how dare the soothsayer be honest in the naked truth for when to do otherwise could cause a great loss of lives but is that the only reason to be honest when the King loses face in the moment and so the soothsayer dies for yielding to the message that came forth and there in the ramparts stands the dreamer alone in this naked truth but we all look away too quickly for fear it might be contagious like I mean after all isn’t ignorance bliss while the coils like tentacles form around us in anxiety tension and the dreamer stands over there watching and singing with tears streaming pleading that we be spared but there is no salvation in obfuscation only distortion of how the water got muddy to start with and without clarity no one can see the truth so send the clowns home and dare the dreamer to dream once more alive as the pilgrims report back from the future of past lines drawn in the space of demarcation as we sing and shout our bondage to materialistic illusions that look like scattered bones in the wind

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Muse this as we ride the ancient skies like a herd of buffalo across the dusty breeze of seven incarnate thieves between here and eternity and back again back again as the water’s fine water’s thrown many of us have said and it’s the pilgrims again into the night into the bleeding night as we ride like wild horses into the night and this is how they say it but I don’t believe it is true that the Muse is a woman and you entice her to give you her gifts of inspiration so you can achieve greatness in poetry song and dance but I don’t believe it is true because it sounds like a romantic relationship between a lover and a suitor and she’s no whore selling her wares but I can’t see beyond the shroud of imagination so it all sounds like some male-dominated bullshit to me like what happens when a woman wants to become a great dancer and seeks the help of a muse is the Muse and the dancer lesbians in this movie and maybe so maybe this is the way it is but I don’t think so I don’t think so I have a different feel about it but that’s not where this is all going as this is about the death of art of creativity of failed attempts to tame the muse in the midnight in the midnight as we wonder into the fields at night and pretend to not notice the wildness that surrounds us and each culture has a story about the origin of creativity and all the cultures and all the stories are correct and a true and accurate account of how we got to be so crazy and used this crazy wisdom to transform our lives into something new and different and it is very unwise to diss another culture even if I don’t think that my understanding of the information I have at hand is true because all I have to do is consider the story of the Muses in ancient Greek history and remember that those stories got handed down through a lot of translators and there’s the rub that someone establishes that this poet or that playwright is the greatest of his peers from Ancient Greece but we don’t know if that’s the way that they felt about it because we don’t have a lot of critical reviews of poetry or plays to go by all we have are the few works that have survived over time and we have no idea of what didn’t survive so it seems really stupid to me to assign greatness to that which we do have and the fact of the matter might be that the greatness is only in the ability of that work to survive because it was so bad by their standards that it got tucked away and never accessed again and that’s how it survived but God forbid that anyone suggest that there be anything greater than what has already been established as greatness and so we have this idea of a muse and we have this idea of creativity or we could go with another culture and say that spider woman brings us the songs poems dances bead work baskets weaving knitting and so forth but after a while the point isn’t about who brings what but the start of it all and the wildness and sense of freedom with the relationship with this source of creativity and we dance and sing to the new energy brought forth by the lyre poem body movement ancient or fresh off the press and over time the artist starts to cater to the tastes of the patrons like the soothsayer who tells the King what he wants to hear to save his own neck and who could blame him really but the artist starts trying to tame the muse to feed the wealthy what they want to hear see feel to reassure them that they have the power to delegate what the muse offers to humanity and as the muse starts to see the desecration of creativity the muse starts to seek a new co-conspirator in the work of creativity and after a while the artist dries up with new ideas and starts to recycle the previous work as an affirmation of the power of the wealthy to dictate creativity and thus the Muse is never tamed but rather moves on to new artists willing to ride the wild horse across the night sky like a night mare of untamed unbridled raging into the wind and storm and beauty and insanity and it is said that the Muse will drive a man mad or even a woman because we’ve already established that there is no gender preference in creativity but the challenge always is to ride and never be thrown off in the darkness of the next wave of fresh ideas and the real scope of it all is the challenge of the artist to never try to tame the muse and damn the rich old farts that sit around looking down at the rest of us like their shit don’t stink and give them the power to destroy a great ride like the muse is an untamed horse riding across the night sky I said that already and the proclamation underneath all of this was that once a friend told me that I would be a great writer but I needed to clean up my writing just a little bit and if I would let him edit my work then he would show me how to achieve that greatness and I ignored his offer because the truth is that it is easy to go back and correct the mistakes like spelling errors and sometimes it is okay to rephrase something this way or that but the fact of the matter is that a lot of times this is the way that it came to me and I’m not going to mess up a great relationship just to please the anal retentive word wizards that don’t have much to say but say it with good craft and are jealous of those that gained the favor of a muse and write like there is no tomorrow damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead into the midnight and I leave this to reader to decide with a few quick examples but nay that isn’t the answer it takes all of it the full breath and scope of it really to decide but here’s a good place to start with a few examples of poetry and art and ride like fury into that good night amen a-ho!

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

It is lost, most of it, due to the lack of interest. “Lack of Interest” and by that I mean, in a manner of civility, that most would prefer that it had never happened, but in that it did happen, they are contented to see it dissipate into the dust of bygone history as if it never happened. But it did happen and I didn’t go away with the “it” of this dilemma. If that exposes an element of denial on their part, that is the risk I take in remaining present and vocal in the spirit of creativity.

It isn’t just about the Industrial Culture in the Nuclear Age, but it is about that also. The impact of “The Bomb” resonated through humanity after the war. As a young man venturing into the world of art in 1971, the photographs of David Smith (sculptor) working in his studio on the farm at Bolton’s Landing in upstate New York, with drawing paper on the floor and ink or home-made egg tempera brushed onto the paper opened a new window into creativity. The drawings would become sketches for welded metal sculptures, or flow into the endless stream of new work being produced in the 1950’s as artists around the world seemed to go into hyper-drive in an effort to produce as much work as quickly as possible, because it could all be gone in a flash as the race to produce more nuclear warheads moved steadily forward as well. There was no time to carve stone any more. Creating works through the new tools of the trade made it possible to create more works, almost as fast as the drawings themselves happened. The rush to produce became an obsession. The photographs and films of Jackson Pollack doing “drip art” at the same time in an out building (or outside the old shed) on a small farm on Long Island became another example of how to work. Combined with an interest in pottery and thus, Japanese pottery, raku, and Zen Buddhism, and the styles of decoration from which all of this merged in some <rewind> fashion back into the whispers of history, gave me impetus to take up a brush and make marks on clay, paper, or canvas without touching the brush to the surface. This became my new handwriting by the time I was 20 years old.

Later I read that Jackson Pollack had observed the ritual sand paintings of the Navajo as a small child and that was a major influence on his effort to recreate something he experienced of that time and place. To reference that as a matter of importance in the early interest in his work became a bit of small print in the general consensus of this new and radical departure from the norm. Similar references of inspiration fall to the wayside in other approaches to creativity, as if humanity was “inventing” a new form of art in this Industrial Culture. Most of the work was well steeped in specific elements of ancient history if one took the time to notice. But popular culture isn’t about noticing the details. So it is easy to ignore the details of this work, the history that has been intentionally destroyed by a detached society in an effort to make like it never happened, as I stay true to the vision and keep working anyway.

I live in “public housing” rent free today. I moved here ten months ago following a period of time when I was “homeless”. Five years ago I went through foreclosure and lost the home and property I had spent many years working to have as a place for my family to live and work and host guests who had benefited greatly from that time I was there, we were there, but in the end, after a nasty divorce around the spouse’s drug addiction and the failure of a supposed-patron who had signed a contractual commitment to buy $100,000.00 worth of art over a two year period of time as part of the mortgage contract with the lender, reneged on that contract, stating that he was a Christian and I was a Cherokee Indian, and as such, he could not morally excuse himself for continuing to honor his commitment to buy art. I’ll call him Kevin C. for the same of identification. Kevin had visited the studio many times over the previous year following the divorce and my return to the property after having been falsely accused of assault and forced off the property through usage of character assassination and a court system that favors the voice of a woman over that of a man in matters of domestic violence, even if she was the one who was guilty, but never mind any of that. No one else seemed to mind, so why should we make that a sticking point today? Kevin would look at some work and admire it and ask how much. Rather than go check my price list I would name a price well below what I had it listed for on my data base, because I knew he didn’t have that much money at the moment, but since he had a large holding of real estate on the market that would allow him to buy work in the future at the pre-established price, I didn’t worry so much about it at the time. He was happy to get the work he admired and I needed what little funds he could shake loose at the time. Later I realized that he had a gambling problem and I consider that to be as much a factor in why he backed out on the contract as anything, but he gave a reason and I’m the fool that takes a liar at his word for some reason.

So I don’t have any of those works on hand to support the fact that I’ve been doing this for a while. What got sold or given away is out there, but stacks and stacks of work went into storage in 2007 and have never been seen since. I don’t know if they exist or not. I approached my sister about contacting other family members a year earlier before the foreclosure, and she related to me that none of my family cared about me. Their silence in this matter speaks for itself. I exist in a vacuum in this environment and yet the will to continue to create drives me forward. From a small stipend I have purchased some paper, oil pastel, ink, and brushes, and am able to produce art again in this makeshift studio. I make marks on the paper with oil pastel to give a pre-existing composition that my ink marks follow in creating a new work. Six pieces of paper laid together on the grass on the lawn behind the apartment, with the digital video recorder a friend gave me a few months ago held in one hand while I apply the ink with a brush or two in the other. No one comes to see the event or hold the camera. No one comes to see the work. Only one or two people have stopped by in the past six months to see the work previous to this work. I exist in a vacuum, and yet I have this sense that it isn’t the nature of humanity as a whole but of those around me that generate this vacuum, so I work and document and write and inform a greater community of this effort, like an SOS signal out there that I am being held hostage by a repressive and genocidal people who seem to hold an air of disinterest in the matter, like it is only a matter of time before they starve me out and then the matter is resolved. In time they will win because time is on their side.

Oliver Loveday February 1, 2012

A close-up of one of the works in progress

POV: Six work of art in progress (the video on You Tube)﻿

These works will be added to a new page, "Ink 4", on my web site off the "Works on paper" page soon.﻿

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

I hate journalist, newspaper reporters, media reporters, and the lot. The idea behind journalism is to give an honest and truthful account of the journey. The town crier would walk through a village at daybreak and “cry out” the news of the day. That was then and this is now. Today, journalists write fiction and call it a true and accurate account of events that have transpired. They take the truth and modify it to fit the market. When you give them a quote and choose your words very carefully, it doesn’t matter. They’ll rephrase it because they are arrogant and think they can tell the truth better than you can, so don’t even think that your words will be reported the same way you said them. Even television reporting can be edited so a phrase or sentence can be left out and make it come out the way they want it to be. It’s best to avoid those newspaper word whores as long as possible. They sell it to the highest bidder and, honey, you don’t even have any jingle in your pocket compared to what the boss man is paying to make it sound like what the advertising customers want it to sound like. Truth is stranger than fiction and their truth is a very strange account.

Art.heart.pushcart.fart.dart.part.start and art school collage painting into idea of decal where the ink from a photograph print in a magazine is lifted from the paper via clear acrylic polymer and pasted onto a painting transparent floating over the pigment underneath

Worked as a printer (press operator//off-set printing press) amazing view of hundreds of sheets of paper falling off roller into stack and setting up next print job pulling culls from a stack and printing over and over on the same pieces of paper hundreds of sheets used to check the setup before using clean white virgin paper for job and looking at printings of random jobs printed over each other

Frequency of seven 7 7 idea and position index cards through printer ink jet multiple runs of different images photographs fractals words random sloppy placement combining collage decal setup printer paper and introduced to mail art community again fluxus flash global community via Face Book and connect combine process anti-art postcards anarchy across international boundaries after invitation from Cathy Garcia to send something to “Nouveaux Delits” and six of these resulting